Fuel scarcity may persist, says Stakeholders - Why Yar’Adua banned importation of bad fuel

Sulaimon Olanrewaju and Komolafe Rasheed, Lagos - 06.04.2008

FRESH facts emerged at the weekend on why the Federal Government insisted on banning the importation of contaminated fuel and punishing the importers. Sunday Tribune gathered that some of the people whose vehicles were damaged by the contaminated fuel at the wake of the crisis were highly placed people who reported the issue to the presidency, demanding its intervention.

The complaint, it was learnt, forced the presidency to investigate the issue which led to the enforcement of the banning of fuel that contained more than 5 per cent ethanol. According to the Sunday Tribune sources, the regulation against the importation of fuel that contained more than 5 per- cent ethanol was not a new one as it had always been there but the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) had found it difficult to enforce the regulation.

A source, who pleaded anonymity, said what most of the marketers normally did was to import fuel with over 5 per cent ethanol and mixed with the ones gotten locally from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). “This has been going on for ages without the DPR doing anything about it. It is not a new thing at all”, he said. Following the decision of the Federal Government to enforce the law prohibiting the importation of fuel containing over 5 per cent ethanol, the DPR had been disallowing ships bearing off specifications fuel to berth in the country.

Industry sources revealed that at the last count about 17 ships had been turned back by the DPR. The refusal of the DPR to allow the ships to berth let alone offload, it was gathered, had been responsible for the fuel scarcity currently being expressed in the country. Initially, the scarcity was restricted to a few towns and cities with the country with the NNPC saying there was nothing to the scarcity other than the inability of marketers to load as a result of the Eid el Maulud and Easter holidays. But by Friday, the scarcity had spread to many other towns and cities across the country with motorists queuing up at the few filling stations that had fuel to sell.

Marketers ,who spoke with the Sunday Tribune, said respite might not come for the next one month or so because it would take the importers to place fresh orders for low ethanol fuel before Nigerians could begin to heave a sigh of relief. “There is no doubt that the scarcity will get worse in the coming weeks. It will take between six and eight weeks for the situation to get better. That is when new orders will begin to get to the country”, one of them said.